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Whilst visiting the big smoke last weekend I witnessed one of cinema’s greatest triumphs – Abel Gance’s thrilling six hour silent epic, Napoleon. Now, I have to admit, I was slightly sceptical. Six hours of silent cinema does not sound like the best use of a frosty Saturday in November, but the 1927 film opened my eyes to the vibrancy and passion of early cinema. 

Upon Captain Cook’s arrival in 1778 the population of the Hawaiian Islands was estimated at around 500,000. By 1848, however, this number had fallen to less than 90,000. Explanations for this exponential decline vary quite considerably, with many historians citing war, famine, and disease as potential factors. Yet contemporary narratives largely focus on one primary cause; the arrival of syphilis.

The conviction this month in The Hague of Thomas Lubanga, a Congolese warlord, for forcing children to fight in his army in the early 2000s is merely the latest in a long line of cases of abuse of this kind that have blighted what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo. The civil wars which began in 1996 bled out of the nation’s borders to involve, in time, eight other African countries – leading to the label ‘Africa’s world war’ – as well as numerous unofficial militias, of which Lubanga’s was one. By the time a peace of sorts was established in 2003, about five and a half million people had died due to the fighting and the disease and starvation it caused.